In these difficult times, growing your own vegetables, herbs, salads and fruit can give some comfort.
I really feel sorry for people without a garden who may be stuck inside. In your own garden you can produce delicious, fresh and healthy produce. Vegetables and fruits in supermarkets are often harvested immature, then transported and redistributed, and so may not have developed to their full potential.
From the moment a crop is harvested (especially fresh produce) minerals are in decline. This couldn’t happen in your own garden when the journey to the plate is only a few yards or better even – a tomato picked straight into your mouth from the greenhouse or polytunnel. There are still quite a few people who have never had the amazing experience of eating home-grown tomatoes, but once you have a “Sungold” or “Rosella”, there is no way back to the tortured supermarket tomatoes. And, in my view, all this can be done in the garden without any chemical inputs.
Gardener Klaus Laitenberger guides us through the process of setting up a vegetable garden.
Starting a garden
If you start your own vegetable garden, there is very little you need and most farmers will have the necessary tools in a shed – shovel, digging fork, manure fork, rake, trowel, wheelbarrow and baler twine to mark beds and rows. The only tool you may not have handy is a hoe.
My favourite hoe is an oscillating hoe, which is available from Fruit Hill Farm (www.fruithillfarm.com) by mail order. Trust me on this - the more weed control you can do while standing up, the better. It’s ten times faster to hoe than to weed and it saves your knees and back.
Preparing the ground
A clean seed bed free of weeds and with a beautiful crumbly soil is our ambition. In some soils, this is hard to achieve and you may need to buy some composted horse or cattle manure (Gee-Up is an excellent product consisting of well-composted horse manure).
Alternatively, look around your farm and you may find an ancient pile of cattle dung right outside a shed. Dig the top layer of weeds away and I promise you’ll find black gold.
Common mistake
The most common mistake made when preparing a vegetable garden is to use a rotavator, which churns up the soil, destroys soil structure and shreds the worms.
It is better to get out your spade or even a plough if more ambitious. Unfortunately, we are a little bit late for this method, so a raised bed may be the only option now. Simply use four pieces of timber, about 10 inches high; screw them together and place them directly onto the grass. The width of the raised bed should not be wider than 1.3m so you can reach the plants easily from either side. You can then back-fill it with soil, compost and hopefully some black gold (old manure or Gee-Up).
Sowing and planting
June is the best month to plant out all your cucurbits (squashes, pumpkins and courgettes). They dislike the cold and windy conditions of May and some gardeners have probably found some casualties of those crops, especially with the hard frost in the second week of May.
It’s quite surprising that early June is actually a great time to get many crops started. I usually sow my main crop carrots, beetroot and swede (the Irish turnip) in the first week of June and they will be perfect for harvesting in October and will store right through the winter. It’s also the best time to sow “Florence” fennel. Rondo F1 is my favourite and most reliable variety.
Towards the end of the month you can sow your purple sprouting broccoli. Most people sow this vegetable far too early and the plants often get too big before the winter and blow over or start cropping too early in winter. They are best sown in June/July and they should stay reasonably small throughout the winter and put on growth and broccoli from February till May.
It’s still a good time to sow the following vegetables into modular trays. These will be planted outdoors about four weeks after sowing: winter cabbages, brussels sprouts, calabrese, kale, kohlrabi, swede, turnip, lettuce, scallions, spinach and chard.
You can also still sow the spring leek “Blue Solaise”. This one also fills the “hungry gap” in early spring. They will be ready for harvesting from March until May next year.
In case you tried to grow oriental salads, such as mizuna, mustards, rocket and pak choi earlier this year you would have noticed that they bolted very quickly. If you sow these again after the summer solstice on 21 June you’ll find they are far slower to go to seed.
If you have cleared beds of early crops and have no follow-on crops planned, I would recommend sowing the green manure crop “Phacelia”. Simply rake the soil and make a good seedbed, sprinkle the seeds evenly over the bed and rake it in. This prevents leaching of nutrients and keeps the soil alive.
The earth takes a deep inward breath during night-time and a big long exhalation during day-time. Plants act as the earth’s lungs and breathe out during the day. You can use this knowledge for managing the water in your soil.
If you hoe or rake the soil in the morning of a sunny day, it will dry out quicker as you open up the soil to the elements. You can look back at what you did 10 minutes ago and you’ll notice that the surface of the soil is dry while the soil ahead of you is still wet. So – hoeing or raking in the morning will help drying out your soil. The opposite is true if you hoe or rake in the evening. You open up the soil for re-absorbing moisture during the night. So if we get another heatwave, you have to hoe in the evening.
If you were a commercial grower you’d be harvesting your lettuce at sunrise because they are still at full vitality. A “6 o’clock lettuce” will stay fresh for longer than a lettuce harvested at midday on a sunny day as the latter is already wilted before it makes the kitchen.
Klaus Laitenberger.
Klaus Laitenberger is the author of three gardening books, a contributor to various gardening magazines, a Nuffield scholar and is an organic inspector for the Organic Trust Ltd and a consultant for Bord na Móna on its new medicinal herb production project. Together with his wife, Joanna, they started a seed company and run gardening courses. More information can be found on www.greenvegetableseeds.com
Read more
Gardening jobs to do in May
No need to panic: an easy way to get growing with your kids
The Garden Diaries: nature’s magnificent bounty
In these difficult times, growing your own vegetables, herbs, salads and fruit can give some comfort.
I really feel sorry for people without a garden who may be stuck inside. In your own garden you can produce delicious, fresh and healthy produce. Vegetables and fruits in supermarkets are often harvested immature, then transported and redistributed, and so may not have developed to their full potential.
From the moment a crop is harvested (especially fresh produce) minerals are in decline. This couldn’t happen in your own garden when the journey to the plate is only a few yards or better even – a tomato picked straight into your mouth from the greenhouse or polytunnel. There are still quite a few people who have never had the amazing experience of eating home-grown tomatoes, but once you have a “Sungold” or “Rosella”, there is no way back to the tortured supermarket tomatoes. And, in my view, all this can be done in the garden without any chemical inputs.
Gardener Klaus Laitenberger guides us through the process of setting up a vegetable garden.
Starting a garden
If you start your own vegetable garden, there is very little you need and most farmers will have the necessary tools in a shed – shovel, digging fork, manure fork, rake, trowel, wheelbarrow and baler twine to mark beds and rows. The only tool you may not have handy is a hoe.
My favourite hoe is an oscillating hoe, which is available from Fruit Hill Farm (www.fruithillfarm.com) by mail order. Trust me on this - the more weed control you can do while standing up, the better. It’s ten times faster to hoe than to weed and it saves your knees and back.
Preparing the ground
A clean seed bed free of weeds and with a beautiful crumbly soil is our ambition. In some soils, this is hard to achieve and you may need to buy some composted horse or cattle manure (Gee-Up is an excellent product consisting of well-composted horse manure).
Alternatively, look around your farm and you may find an ancient pile of cattle dung right outside a shed. Dig the top layer of weeds away and I promise you’ll find black gold.
Common mistake
The most common mistake made when preparing a vegetable garden is to use a rotavator, which churns up the soil, destroys soil structure and shreds the worms.
It is better to get out your spade or even a plough if more ambitious. Unfortunately, we are a little bit late for this method, so a raised bed may be the only option now. Simply use four pieces of timber, about 10 inches high; screw them together and place them directly onto the grass. The width of the raised bed should not be wider than 1.3m so you can reach the plants easily from either side. You can then back-fill it with soil, compost and hopefully some black gold (old manure or Gee-Up).
Sowing and planting
June is the best month to plant out all your cucurbits (squashes, pumpkins and courgettes). They dislike the cold and windy conditions of May and some gardeners have probably found some casualties of those crops, especially with the hard frost in the second week of May.
It’s quite surprising that early June is actually a great time to get many crops started. I usually sow my main crop carrots, beetroot and swede (the Irish turnip) in the first week of June and they will be perfect for harvesting in October and will store right through the winter. It’s also the best time to sow “Florence” fennel. Rondo F1 is my favourite and most reliable variety.
Towards the end of the month you can sow your purple sprouting broccoli. Most people sow this vegetable far too early and the plants often get too big before the winter and blow over or start cropping too early in winter. They are best sown in June/July and they should stay reasonably small throughout the winter and put on growth and broccoli from February till May.
It’s still a good time to sow the following vegetables into modular trays. These will be planted outdoors about four weeks after sowing: winter cabbages, brussels sprouts, calabrese, kale, kohlrabi, swede, turnip, lettuce, scallions, spinach and chard.
You can also still sow the spring leek “Blue Solaise”. This one also fills the “hungry gap” in early spring. They will be ready for harvesting from March until May next year.
In case you tried to grow oriental salads, such as mizuna, mustards, rocket and pak choi earlier this year you would have noticed that they bolted very quickly. If you sow these again after the summer solstice on 21 June you’ll find they are far slower to go to seed.
If you have cleared beds of early crops and have no follow-on crops planned, I would recommend sowing the green manure crop “Phacelia”. Simply rake the soil and make a good seedbed, sprinkle the seeds evenly over the bed and rake it in. This prevents leaching of nutrients and keeps the soil alive.
The earth takes a deep inward breath during night-time and a big long exhalation during day-time. Plants act as the earth’s lungs and breathe out during the day. You can use this knowledge for managing the water in your soil.
If you hoe or rake the soil in the morning of a sunny day, it will dry out quicker as you open up the soil to the elements. You can look back at what you did 10 minutes ago and you’ll notice that the surface of the soil is dry while the soil ahead of you is still wet. So – hoeing or raking in the morning will help drying out your soil. The opposite is true if you hoe or rake in the evening. You open up the soil for re-absorbing moisture during the night. So if we get another heatwave, you have to hoe in the evening.
If you were a commercial grower you’d be harvesting your lettuce at sunrise because they are still at full vitality. A “6 o’clock lettuce” will stay fresh for longer than a lettuce harvested at midday on a sunny day as the latter is already wilted before it makes the kitchen.
Klaus Laitenberger.
Klaus Laitenberger is the author of three gardening books, a contributor to various gardening magazines, a Nuffield scholar and is an organic inspector for the Organic Trust Ltd and a consultant for Bord na Móna on its new medicinal herb production project. Together with his wife, Joanna, they started a seed company and run gardening courses. More information can be found on www.greenvegetableseeds.com
Read more
Gardening jobs to do in May
No need to panic: an easy way to get growing with your kids
The Garden Diaries: nature’s magnificent bounty
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